Text Team mission statement and foundation notes

Proposal to form a text-team. Reworked version based on input by Tom Chance,
Jes Hall, Aaron, Rick Seymour and on some earlier discussion.

Why a Text Team?

The reason for forming a text team is to get the work on promo-texts a bit more organized, so the work distributes between many shoulders, and also to increase the percentage of consistent messaging in KDE promotion and generally to improve the quality of promotional texts in KDE together.

In other words: "The goal of the text team is to make sure, that all official promotion texts of KDE become as impressive to the reader as the artwork from the Oxygen Team is to our users."

Getting up to date

The idea to form a text team was born at the marketing meeting in december 2006.

Since then this proposal was discussed with those who called up that they are interested in writing promotional texts for KDE to form a constistent proposal to take into the open (this text). If you find anything which might hinder the text team from being successful and open (or anything else, which doesn't seem to fit), please write so at once.

You'll find some information on the parts of the marketing meeting which
concern the text team at the end of this message.

The text team has a goal and a mission statement. The goal is our internal
target, while the mission statement is what should be instantly visible to
all who ask about the text team.

While the goal seems to be informally agreed upon, the mission statement
needs to be as precise as possible, because it is, what others will see
about the team, and it should fit what we actually do, so I'll ask all of
you for input once again and we can decide together which fits.

Goal: "The goal of the text team is to make sure, that all official promotion texts of KDE become as impressive to the reader as the artwork from the Oxygen Team is to our users."

Mission Statement: ""All official promotional texts published by KDE run through our hands. We strive to help them become precise and beautiful and vibrant with life.
To archieve this goal we create template texts, edit articles, and create original articles. We also serve as an entrypoint into the different writing communities inside the KDE project."

(Entrypoint means: People can find info on all the writing communities which exist in KDE, and they can easily find out how to join them, so it becomes easier for independent writers to contribute to kde).

Structures

Up till now, there's only one structure: We need about two people who see it as their responsibility to keep the contact with the organisation team (also formed at the marketing meeting).

I assume we will need more structures/guidelines (for example a simple
"Mine", which means the one asking has a certain time to review a text, so we can be sure we review texts and don't duplicate work. Another part is having a priorized list of tasks, which we can simply take up).

Relationship between the Text Team and the marketing group

- There's an organisation team, which can ask for texts for areas, which
are important for the whole strategy. At the weekend, Jürgen and Martijn
opted to do that (and get more people into it).

- There's a research team, which will identify specific worthwhile targets
for promotion of KDE, which are very visible to others as well as likely to
switch to KDE - for example certain NGOs. Producing texts for that
promotion is one of the goals of the text team (by far not all, though),
but if that doesn't interest you, there surely is plenty of other stuff to
do instead. At least a part of the team should focus on single targets,
though, to archieve the necessary momentum in that area. The research team
will also provide information why that target is interesting right now, so
we won't run blind and can decide if the decision of the research team is
sound and if we can agree on it. Research team began with Wade Olson,
Stefan and Sebas).

- There's some information which normally shouldn't be spread to the
public, because that might break the longterm strategy, but since I don't
believe in group-work with secrets, I want to fill up everyone in the text
team on the details, as soon as the team stands (at least as much as is
feasible without repeating the whole weekend. For missing things there's
always the way to simply ask). No need for overboarding secrecy, I think.

- If there's something _we_ need (for example artwork for a specific text), we
can also contact the orga team, which will then try to get it.

Relationship with kde-promo

We can use kde-promo as platform where people can send texts which need
review, but this is up to us.
Should we do all open discussions on kde-promo? I'd prefer to
send "confidential" info via private mail, but I hope there shouldn't be
much of that.

One example of "confidential" information would be information which can very
easily be misunderstood and lead to needless flames, if not written carefully
to keep it clear, so that it might be unwise to get it into archives before
having it reread by someone else.

For special press releases we can use EMBARGO lines, which simply state when
that document may be put into public.

Really short summary of the marketing weekend

- The next main target for marketing is a
not-so-tech-savy-but-tech-interested users. That doesn't mean, they are the
only target, but they are the current focus for the different groups.

- We identified core values, how KDE as product and as community should be
presented/communicated/perceived to/by non-kde people. They are not
must-use-words, but rather the main ideas, which should stick in the
longterm in the heads of those, who read articles about KDE:
(see Mail from Sebastian Kügler:"[kde-promo] Brandingmeeting: Product and
Community Vision" - the file with info is also attached)

People keeping the contact to the coordination group

We need two people who keep the contact to the coordination group.

The coordination of the different groups (research, PR, organisation,
artwork, production, text) is done by the representatives of the groups, so
I'd say, we should discuss in here what we'd prefer and the
representatives then get that decision into the discussion between the
groups. They also need to summarize for the group why a decision was taken
in coordination.

Now to get productive

There's some questions we should find answers to. Then we can officially
found the Text Team and begin work at last.

Please don't hesitate to already take up some job on kde-promo. The plans
in this group aren't likely to be strict schedules :)

Which ways can we take to reach the goal?

Some ideas:

* Moderating/editing/constructively critisizing submitted articles
* Creating template texts for others to simply plug in where needed
* Writing Articles ourselves

(Do you know more ways? Does one of these ways interest you most? If yes,
please write it!)

- Tom:
It would be useful to prioritise kinds of texts. Here's a quick suggestion:

1. The core pages on www.kde.org
2. Official KDE & KOffice press releases
3. Trade show materials like posters, leaflets, etc.
4. Web pages and press releases for KDE subprojects
5. Dot articles, promotional articles submitted elsewhere by private authors
rather than as official articles from the KDE Project

What am I missing?

- Arne:
I think "broken pages" could also range up there somehow.

Which program do we use for storing texts?

In the coordination of the teams OpenOffice is being used, so that might
also be a good choice here. What do you think?

- Tom:
How about we say "use whatever you want, so long as it's a Free format"? I
like to write in plain text most of the time, but sometimes it's handy to use
OOo's change tracking features, or to mark it up in HTML for links and other
formatting.
- Jes:
Plain text & HTML allow flexibility

- Arne:
We seem to need some more input on this.

How do we want to communicate?

There's mail, but we can also use Wikis, spreadKDE, Jabber and IRC.
For mails we can use kde-promo, another list or private mail.

Which ones will ensure that the group continues to succeed?

- Jes:
I'm not on kde-promo and I'd need a fairly compelling argument to join a
10th KDE mailing list.

- Arne:
I'd vote for at least Mail and Jabber as quick communication and spreadKDE
as platform to store texts and other material which is there to stay, but
maybe you have better ideas.

Besides: Jabber-ID: drak@kdetalk.net

That's it for the moment.
As soon as we have this worked out, we can begin creating the task-list and
deciding on how we can claim tasks (like checking a submitted text, for
example).

Please also have a look at the attached file. It is the result of working
out, which core values should be present in texts.
Aditionally to that, there's a focus: "Freedom". It doesn't need to be
spelled directly, but instead be implicitely written into texts, because that
is a value which the competition can't ever offer (competition = proprietary
systems).

When we write texts, we should try to find (as one of the messages you
convey), what freedom means to the kind of people who'll mainly read the
text and integrate that into the text, but not necessariyl the word freedom
itself (to avoid inflation of the word).

You can find more info on this at the keymessages site in the branding meeting
documentation:
http://spread.kde.org/branding_meeting/keymessages

Do you have other ideas, what we need to have already decided upon, when we
finish creating the proposal for founding the group?

Best wishes,
Arne
PS: I'll try to summarize discussions, except if someone else opts to do so
:)
Additional Contributions:
- Rick:
One thing that is counjored up when you say "Official texts" would be
something that is produced about KDE that is as least distribution specific
as possible and is information that brings everyone upto the same level. For
this i would recommend almost a grading system ie.
1) For the developer - pathways each module should take
2) The newbie who wants to get a shiny new KDE working with as little fuss
3) The distribution organiser. What is the best way to get KDE from source to
a rpm deb ebuild and get it on peoples computers.
etc (obviously kept within confines)

Looking around the distributions websites there is a wealth of information
already of how to get KDE installed, would it not be a good idea for each of
us to get involved with the wiki for our distribution and maintain that but
also have a central wiki with more generalised information

If anyone saw my little bit on my first toe dipping into KDE4 I read the
compiling information from a wiki on plasma.kde.org. Surely this sort of
information needs to be within the central store, rather than fragmented here
there and everywhere.

I would also suggest doing a sort of "asset management" exercise where its
worked out, how much of the web KDE owns, the list of sub domains, whats on
each sub domain and the information contained within it.

- Tom:
It would also be good to draw up some guidelines, for example a number of days
per 100 words that they need to give us to ensure we can work on it properly.

- What's the scope?
The scope I can see is mostly:
- dot-stories (dot-editing is already managed by the dot people, so we can
contribute best by giving potential dot editors their contact and by writing
relevant stories)
- general articles
- flyers
- release notes

--Tom: Just to jump in here a moment, I'm sure this is unfair on Arne, who probably didn't mean what I'm suggesting here, but we ought to be careful about that phrase. Really when a release comes out there are three main audiences:

- Developers, who want to know the technical details, new API functionalities and changes, etc. with full changelogs and so on
- Users, who want to know new features in a nice visual guide
- Press, who want a super-short summary of a story

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How we want KDE to appear in the future and we perceive it now was discussed at the branding meeting. One result of these discussions can be found in the Community Identity Charkteristics.